


Little Slice of Heaven

by Purple_Turtle



Series: Little Slice of Heaven [1]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cookies, Daddy Peter, Infantilism, Lies, Little Neal, Little's are known, Mommy Elizabeth, Non-Sexual Age Play, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 07:17:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17658416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Turtle/pseuds/Purple_Turtle
Summary: Neal gulped.He was inbigtrouble.He hadn’t meant to get caught; he was sure his plan had been failsafe. Apparently though, it hadn’t been. He had been caught far too easily. Neal guessed that’s what happened when an FBI agent knew all your tricks. Still he thought he’d gotten away with this latest escapade, through and through… he hadn’t even needed Mozzie’s help one bit. He had been proud of himself. Until Elizabeth caught him and ratted him out to Peter.-X-Neal Caffrey is a Little. Peter and Elizabeth are his caregivers.Little Neal gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.





	Little Slice of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!!!!  
> I've recently started watching this show and I'm (to put it very simply) in love. I've only stopped binging it because this little idea has been bugging me!! I got it all written down pretty quickly!!
> 
> Everything's pretty similar to cannon, except for the obvious. Little's and Caregivers (and maybe a few other 'statuses') are known and accepted as a part of life. Neal Caffrey is a Little, Peter and Elizabeth are a married couple of Caregivers with no Little to call their own. Neal becomes that Little.
> 
> I'll go through and edit any mistakes a bit later on. I wanted to get this posted!! Let me know what you think!!

 Neal sat at the dining room table, trying to make himself look as innocent as possible.

Elizabeth sat at the head of the table, wearing a mean pokerface that not even Neal could decipher. He could feel her eyes boring into his, as if waiting for him to break. He avoided looking at her.

Peter paced back and forth down the length of the table, sometimes muttering to himself and shaking his head every few seconds. Neal avoided looking at Peter too.

Satchmo was led over by the couch, with his head resting on his paws watching with what Neal could only describe as mild interest at the scene that was playing out in front of him.

Neal gulped.

He was in _big_ trouble.

He hadn’t meant to get caught; he was sure his plan had been failsafe. Apparently though, it hadn’t been. He had been caught far too easily. Neal guessed that’s what happened when an FBI agent knew all your tricks. Still he thought he’d gotten away with this latest escapade, through and through… he hadn’t even needed Mozzie’s help one bit. He had been proud of himself. Until Elizabeth caught him and ratted him out to Peter.

Peter stopped pacing, finally seeming to come to a conclusion on how to proceed. When Peter turned to face him, Neal’s stomach dropped at the stern, yet disappointed look. He gulped again and ducked his head.

“You want to explain this Neal?” Peter asked, voice hard but not completely unkind.

Neal shifted his eyes to survey the evidence that had been gathered against him and laid out in the middle of the table.

“Well,” Neal started, curling his bare toes into the soft rug that was underfoot. He said nothing for a moment, trying to think of something, _anything_ , that might get him out of this mess. Behind him, Satchmo groaned at the lack of attention he was receiving, but the sound of the dog struck him with an idea. “It was Satch.”

“Satch?” Elizabeth asked, voice deadly serious, her face not portraying how she took his little lie.

Neal nodded enthusiastically.

“I tried to stop him. Really, I did. But he didn’t listen.”

Peter and Elizabeth shared a look, both agreeing that this lie was a little farfetched. Neal watched as they looked around him at the golden Labrador retriever, who picked his head up and stuck his tongue out happily when he realised, they were looking at him.

“You’re going to blame this on the dog?” Elizabeth continued, moving herself to sit completely facing Neal. She fixed him with a stare. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

Neal took a few quick breaths and tried to calm his racing heart. His hands were sweaty, and he tried to subtly wipe them on his pants. He thought that Elizabeth should definitely consider a position in the FBI – she was definitely scary… Neal could imagine the number of criminals that she would crack with just that stare. It was why he couldn’t open his mouth to speak, because he knew she would catch him out. Instead, he avoided her gaze and just nodded.

“Try again,” Peter ordered. “And try the truth this time, Neal.”

Neal said nothing. He fiddled with the button at the bottom of his shirt and just evaded looking at anyone or anything that might give him away. He knew that admitting to them what had happened would make the outcome a bit better, but he couldn’t get the words out.

“Okay,” Peter nodded, accepting that the other man wasn’t going to talk. “You want me to tell you what _I_ think happened?”

Still, Neal said nothing. He tried to keep the panic from his face and body language, not wanting to betray how much they were currently getting to him. He could feel tears starting to spring to his eyes and he blinked, trying to will them away. He knew his window to tell them what had happened was closing, but yet he still couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Peter waited a moment longer. He put his hands on the back of a chair and fixed Neal with a look that he knew would make the other male squirm. Peter sighed, knowing that he had given Neal plenty of time to speak up, but it was obvious that it wasn’t going to happen.

“I think that you…”

“No, wait…” Neal jumped in, head shooting up and fixing his red, puffy eyes on Peter. He was ready to tell them now.

“No,” Peter interrupted him. “You had your chance. Now you listen.”

Neal said nothing, just sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and started nibbling away at it in anticipation to what Peter was going to say next.

“Thank you,” Peter murmured when it became apparent that Neal had actually listened to him. “I think that you waited until everyone was busy and then you snuck into the kitchen.”

Neal dropped his head again, finding the seam on his trousers really interesting. He had started to squirm, and both Elizabeth and Peter smirked, knowing that they were onto him.

“You took a single cookie and ate it. But I think you only got half way through before you got nervous about being caught. You put down the cookie you were eating and took the cookie jar. You didn’t realise, but you left the half-eaten cookie on the side. You also didn’t realise, but as you ate cookies on the way upstairs, you left a literal trail of cookie crumbs in your wake. And when you’d eaten all the cookies you hid the cookie jar in your cupboard.”

Even though it was something both Elizabeth and Peter agreed couldn’t go unnoticed, they both saw the funny side of it. With Neal’s eyes safely fixed on his lap, Elizabeth let herself smirk and silently snicker at the man’s audacity. Peter wouldn’t look at her, knowing that he would find her smile contagious and blow their cover. Neal couldn’t know that they found this funny.

“Am I wrong, Neal?” Peter prompted when Neal stayed quiet.

“No Daddy. But…”

“No buts,” Peter cut across from him, pushing himself up and standing straight again, affectively silencing the little.

“Mommy told you that those cookies were for after dinner because you’d been such a good boy today,” Elizabeth explained, pokerface back on and voice firm. “I’m very disappointed Neal.”

Neal sniffed, a single tear running down his face. He lifted his arm and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. His bottom lip wobbled, and he opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words were spoken.

“What do you have to say for yourself young man?” Peter asked, placing his hands on his hips.

Neal looked up at them, and they could see how truly sorry he really was, without the words having to be spoken. Neal hated being a disappointment to either of them – it was a word rarely spoken in the house for that very reason, only brought out when necessary.

“I’m sorry!” He spoke, voice choking on the lump of tears lodged in his throat.

“Thank you, Neal,” Elizabeth spoke, while Peter just gave a curt nod.

For the next few seconds the only sound that surrounded them was Neal sniffing and trying to get control of his tears. Elizabeth noticed how he was failing. She looked to her right, waiting to see what Peter’s next cause of action was. They shared a look, and Elizabeth nodded her agreement.

“Corner.”

Neal looked up at the single word, spoken scarily calm and quiet. For a moment he didn’t move, as if the word and order was sinking in. It wasn’t until Peter fixed him with a stare to match his tone did Neal do as he was told.

He jumped up from the chair as if it had suddenly burnt him and stumbled across the room, almost falling into the corner in his haste to reach it.

“10 minutes Neal,” Peter decided, voice softer now.

Elizabeth excused herself to the kitchen to finish preparing their evening meal, despite knowing that it was very unlikely that Neal was going to touch it after eaten a whole pack of cookies. Peter cleared up the cookie jar, the half-eaten cookie and a small portion of the cookie crumbs that were all found in the wake of Neal’s ‘crime’.

“You think I was too harsh on him?” Peter asked after washing his hands. He leant against the side with his arms crossed, purposefully positioning himself to be able to spot Neal and make sure that their master thief didn’t become an escape artist either.

“Oh hunny,” Elizabeth brushed him off lightly, in her ever-confident tone. “Neal needs firm. You know this. Besides, all you did was ask him whether he did it and then put him in time out.”

“Yeah,” Peter sighed, frowning over at the little boy over in the corner who was sniffling quietly to himself.

Elizabeth closed the oven door, satisfied that the lasagne cooking inside was doing okay. She folded the over gloves neatly and placed them beside the oven before fixing her husband with a look. She smiled at him fondly, watching as he watched over their adopted little.

Neal was something. Something special, that is. He had so quickly wormed his way into the Burke’s hearts without any of them really realising it until it was far too late.

The boy had run Peter on a wild goose chase for years on end and it wasn’t until they caught him that it became apparent that the famous Neal Caffrey was a classified Little. It had shocked them all. The papers had a field day when they’d found out.

Elizabeth had spent much of the years leading up to Caffrey’s arrest almost having to fight for her husbands attention; not that she minded really, as she knew how important it was to catch the conman. But when Peter had slapped the handcuffs on Caffrey that first time, Elizabeth had thought that was going to be the end of it – but Peter hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Neal throughout his four-year sentence, unable to believe that the whole time the boy had been a little.

It puzzled everyone as to how Caffrey had managed to pull everything off as a Little. Little’s were thought to spend most of their time in their headspace, some, if not most, unable to read and write, let alone be able to successfully pull off some of the heists that Caffrey had (or as he liked to remind them, _allegedly_ had).

When Peter had agreed to Neal’s deal after his second arrest, Peter had come under scrutiny by a few people saying that the FBI agent had a soft spot for the little, just because he was a caregiver. Elizabeth knew that was _some_ of the reason, but not all of it. Neal had worked alongside Peter for a month or so before he suddenly dropped, unexpectedly one evening.

Peter had brought Neal home that night and both Peter and Elizabeth had taken care of him. They suggested the idea that they take care of Neal when he was feeling Little, but the offer was denied to begin with. It took the unexpected drops to keep happening for Neal to relent and accept their help.

Since then, he had moved into their house, taken over their two guest rooms (he had a ‘big’ room and a ‘little’ room), changed their routine and had become a desired, constant part of their life. He had been the one to start calling them ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’, with no prompting or pressure from either Elizabeth or Peter.

Neal was a special kind of little, one that wasn’t tied to a certain age. Most Little’s had a pretty constant age that they regressed to when in their headspace, but Neal didn’t. No one really knew why, and it wasn’t a bad thing… the doctor assured them that it did happen at times and that it was nothing to worry about it. Sometimes Neal was the cutest toddler that could barely feed himself without painting his face and other times he was an independent, bratty teenager. It certainly made life interesting, but both Peter and Elizabeth agreed that they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Right now, though, Neal was around 3 years. A toddler who had almost literally been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“He’s fine,” Elizabeth reassured her husband. She walked up to him, placing her hands on his upper arms comfortingly. He looked down at her and a small smile graced his lips, the worry lines smoothing out. “In a few more minutes you’ll have him in your arms, and he’ll cry on your shoulder, apologising profusely and promising that he’ll never do it again.”

“Until the next time,” Peter scoffed playfully with a smirk.

“Until the next time,” Elizabeth agreed, matching his smile and sealing it like a promise with a kiss.

-X-

When Neal sat at the dining table the next morning, he was very much the Neal Caffrey who could con his way through anything. Today was a ‘big’ day for him.

“Morning Peanut,” Elizabeth greeted him, the same way she greeted him every morning, whether he was little  _or_ big She placed a plate of waffles in front of him with one hand. Her other hand squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and she pressed a chaste kiss to his perfectly styled hair.

“Morning Ma,” Neal greeted the name slipping past his lips, as he leant into her touch. She squeezed his shoulders again before taking the seat beside him.

“Are you sure your feeling big today?” Peter asked kindly, folding his newspaper down and picking up his coffee mug.

“Course,” Neal put his charming smile on and picked up his own coffee mug, raising it to Peter in a mock toast.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Peter nodded, toasting him back. He thought back briefly to when he’d woken the lad an hour earlier and had been greeted with a grumbled, sleepy, _“Leave me alone Daddy”_ before the boy had decided that actually he wasn’t feeling little today. Peter wasn’t sure if he was fooled though. “Well, you make sure you tell me if that changes, okay?”

“I will Peter,” Neal agreed readily, before picking up his fork and digging into the waffles.

Peter and Elizabeth picked up their conversation from earlier, before Neal had joined them, about the trip they were planning to see Elizabeth’s parents in the next month. Neal rolled his eyes, knowing that he wasn’t _expected_ to go if he didn’t want to, but knowing he’d be stuck with a babysitter if not, in case he dropped.

When the chatter died down some, Neal spoke up.

“Look guys, I’m really sorry for the cookie incident yesterday,” He apologised, catching them both off guard.

“Why are you still apologising?” Elizabeth asked kindly, putting her hand over his and rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. The touch wasn’t sexual and felt very much like a parent comforting their child. “You said sorry last night.”

“I know… it’s just… you said…” Neal couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“That I was disappointed?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yeah,” Neal nodded. He missed the side-glance that Elizabeth shared with Peter.

“Oh baby, I _was_ disappointed. I’m not anymore. I promise,” Elizabeth smiled at him kindly, cupping his cheek softly when Neal gave her a sheepish look. “You served your time out, and I think the tummy ache you suffered through was enough to set things straight again, okay?”

“Okay,” Neal agreed, giving her one of his dazzling smiles, and she knew that she had convinced him.

“Tell you what though Neal,” Peter beamed, the teasing tone catching both Elizabeth’s and Neal’s attention. “You’re not so good as thieving when you’re little.”

“Alright,” Neal scoffed, pointing his fork in Peter’s direction. “If Satch hadn’t started barking at me for a cookie then I wouldn’t have had to run with them. He was going to rat me out if he kept barking!”

Elizabeth immediately started praising Satchmo who was led by her chair. Neal joined in but instead was playfully scolding the dog for getting him into trouble.

Peter smiled warmly at the scene. His wife, his little, his dog. This was his family; his own little slice of heaven. It made him ridiculously happy.

**Author's Note:**

> If people are interested, I'm looking to make this into a bit of a series of one-shots!! All involving Little Neal of course.  
> This story is more of an introduction to their world that anything else, but I have a few other ideas including;  
> \- Bratty 9 year old Neal at the office.  
> \- Neal being closer to his headspace than he cares to admit and slipping up at the office a few times.  
> \- Sick!Neal
> 
> If you guys have any ideas or prompts that you might want to see let me know and I'll see what I can do!!
> 
> Please let me know what you think; I'm really excited to share this one with you!!
> 
> Now, BRB going to binge some more episodes!!!!


End file.
